They are almost all gone.  Those children of the Great Depression who went on to become the Greatest Generation.  Who survived hardships few today can fully understand.  Those were my parents.  The times in which they grew up forever affected the way they thought about money and security.  Though not a miser, my father did not “part easily with his brass.”  Luxuries like color television and air conditioning were never on the table until mama got sick.  And there was no such thing as an ‘allowance’ for children.

Unlike my friends, whose parents grew up in a prosperous post-war economy and doled out generous allowances, my father required work for pay.  And those chores which were worthy of pay were paid for in 1935 dollars, unadjusted for the rampant inflation of my youth.  If I was going to have money for essentials like Slurpees, baseball cards and wacky packs, I had to expand my personal economy.

My gig-economy consisted of door-to-door sales and bottle redemption.   My father gardened and allowed me to peddle the excess to our neighbors.  But the real money was to be made in scouring roadside ditches for glass coke bottles which were redeemed at the local grocery store for the princely sum of $ 0.05 each.  This cost nothing but time and pride but paid hefty rewards. 

Not all bottles could be redeemed.  But those that could were clearly labeled.  We understood redemption.  It meant buying back something discarded and deemed useless.  Today only 10 states have bottle redemption programs.  But you can look on bottles for the code, “ME-VT-CT-MA-NY-OR-IA-5¢ MI-CA 10¢” to see how they may be redeemed.

The word redeem literally means “to buy back.”  It involves a cost paid to recover, restore or ransom something or someone viewed as irrecoverable.  While our modern meaning includes the idea of restoring value, meaning or purpose to something or someone beyond hope, the word redeem always involves some type of payment or cost.  The story of the Bible is a story of redemption. In fact, it is THE story of redemption. The gracious, Triune God ransoms, recovers and restores His people to rescue them from slavery to sin, death and eternal rage and torment.

In Exodus, God redeems his people from almost half a millennia of dehumanizing slavery in Egypt at the staggering cost of the firstborn of Egypt.  Then in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as the Lord leads them to the Promised Land, he decrees laws that obligate kinsman-redeemers to redeem their relatives from landlessness and slavery due to financial hardship, to avenge their blood if they are killed, and to receive restitution for property sins against a dead relative to hold in trust for their families. 

Redemption was woven into the social fabric of God’s people to point them to THE Kinsman-Redeemer who was to come.  One who would redeem people from enslavement to sin and death at the ultimate cost of the death of the only-begotten Son of God.  The Old Testament is filled with anticipation of this redeemer, the only redeemer of God’s elect, whom the Shorter Catechism describes as

The only redeemer of God’s elect … the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.  -Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 20

The Book of Ruth contains one of the beautiful Old Testament pictures of this kinsman-redeemer foreshadowed in the person of Boaz, Naomi’s relative and redeemer.   Boaz’ kindness (hesed) toward Ruth reveals God’s grace active in his life.  Though she is a foreigner, Boaz not only permits her to glean, but offers protection, provision, and inclusion into his own extended work family to ensure provision for Ruth and Naomi.  But there is more!  When Ruth returns home, Naomi tells her that Boaz is a ‘redeemer.’  And as the story unfolds, we see God’s grace upon grace unfolded to Naomi and Ruth through their redeemer.  

Boaz, whose name means “strength,” who is described as a “mighty man.” who is a faithful kinsman-redeemer, exercises proverbial love over and above what the law demanded.  Yet even as remarkable as his strength, valor, and faithful lovingkindness are, Boaz is but a dim reflection of THE Kinsman-Redeemer who was to come.  The genealogy at the end of Ruth foreshadows the more complete genealogy in Matthew 1 of the one who would “redeem us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us… so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

Naomi and Ruth needed a redeemer.  Not just from hunger, poverty, loneliness, and insecurity.  Boaz, their near kinsman-redeemer could offer those, but a greater kinsman-redeemer was needed to deliver from sin and death.  He is the redeemer Naomi, Ruth and we need most.  

Join us as we examine Ruth 2:18-23 and consider the Lord’s kindness in providing a kinsman-redeemer.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.